A friend of mine, who had joined the infamous moved back club but had to relinquish her membership because she got an irresistible job offer, was in Lagos recently for the Christmas holidays. I love her because she is an exaggerated version of me, melodramatic is an understatement. She told me about how London made her suicidal (melodramatic), and she just wanted to jump under the tube, everything about a world that we all once loved did her head in. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel, or shall I say at the end of the jubilee line. She talked about how she felt that she was living a REAL life in London, she was no longer conformed to living up to peoples expectations and perceptions of her the way she had to in Lagos. She could just be her, have her shortcomings and speak about them as opposed to do everything possible to hide them from everyone, she could admit to being a novice at her profession and in need of experience as opposed to "forming expert" to get any experience here.
True to form this got me thinking. Who are we? Are people really the persona that they are living up to in public, or is there something more to them, what are they hiding about themselves that they really needn't. I say this often, and the truth is I knicked it from my dad, he says it to me all the time: "perception is real, but perception isn't always reality". This rings so true in Lagos. People create a persona for themselves, a character, an image, intricate personality traits, a career, a lifestyle they want you to associate them with, a sense of confidence, a certain way of speaking, their bespoke humour....
The city is full of, for lack of a better word, wanna-be's, living out something they perceive to be better than what they are, making that perception the reality that others know them as. There are the people that think they are Lagos' answer to Chuck Bass and Serena Van der Woodson; those with larger than life personalities - when they walk into a room it is guaranteed to be swelling with laughter till the moment they step out; the cold as ice ladies who are more independent than the 4th of July armed with a stank attitude to mask the fact that all they really want is a man to be perpetually at their side; the chicks that cement over their deep insecurities about the way they look with NW45, blobs of glue and 3 inch lashes, 24 inch Mongolian tresses, nicely finished off with a red sole; those whose phonetics pass Queen Lizzies own to mask the fact that they only did their masters abroad, all previous education was in Nassarawa, the guys that go around with their heads in the air drenched in and high off their cologne induced entitlement, knowing fully well that before they sprayed it they felt pangs of loneliness, a feeling of unaccomplishment and failure; there are those that give Paris Hilton's social circle a run for their money - all their friends are the sons and daughters of Nigerias business moguls, they don't know what qualified them to be among but they are gonna walk the walk and talk the talk and nobody will ever know that their father is not the chairman of a big telecom company, or MD of a multinational oil and gas subsidiary, nor is he the owner of any money minting jetty; then finally (cause I could go on here) there are the career women and (chair)men who with prowes akin to that of Picaso paint jaw dropping images of their jobs and their particular position such that you would value the work of art more than you would Steve Jobs and Apple or even Coca-Cola. Lagos is a city pouring over with master actors and actresses, who unfortunately won't be walking away with any oscars, but perhaps if they're lucky a good conversation and a bunch of envious people, who will in turn master their own rendition of the performance to compete.
Perhaps it is my special gift, or the other film critics haven't blown their covers yet, but I can see far beyond the stellar performances into the real person, what they're hiding, the pain that drives the actor to give a great show, and it is far better than any charade. We are deeply afraid of our vulnerabilities, but it is really those vulnerabilities that make us BEAUTIFUL, they add character. It's the crack in the porcelain doll, the depth of character in it's soul that you see in it's eyes, the mistakes, regrets, memories, and shortcomings that can make it real and alive. The finely moulded masks are but clay, and even if nobody else knows it is a mask, you always will. Before the mask becomes your face carefully take it off, place it on your dresser table, discover WHO YOU REALLY ARE, and LOVE yourself enough to be yourself.
xoxo.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Moved Back Club
Last year I blogged about the tourists that tend to invade our town this time every year. This year, however, it seems that the year end / festive season has crept up on me without the normal jitters, or slight anxiety with the knowledge that very soon Nail Place will be filled with the pleasant (or unpleasant, as the case may be) sounds of ‘fonetics’ in all shapes and sizes, the one that has “entered”, or the one that is still struggling to roll her r’s well, Bacchus will be teaming with young ladies in their belt-skirts (I believe they call those bodycon skirts), the queue at glover court will be days long. No this year it appears the change in the Lagos atmosphere will be but a slight one, since all the regular tourists have joined the “moved back club”.
Yes... “The moved back club”, if you no join am yet, make you pick race, space is running out, membership is no longer exclusive, na bronze card whey remain, no entry into the lounge.
The other day I was at the facial bar, while I was being pampered, I had the great pleasure of listening to a few girls outside in the reception, talking about the challenges they have faced since they MOVED BACK, “had to cut my facials to once a month”, “can’t keep up with the latest fashion trends”, “why do people keep asking me how my night was”...etc... and of course the entire conversation ends with “Well I have found to keep sane in this crazy city you have to get out as often as possible”. As I’m typing this I am cringing, because it sounds all too familiar.
As they spoke I remembered that my 3rd year anniversary with Lagos slipped by without my noticing, me and my city didn’t have a romantic dinner, exchange gifts, whisper sweet nothings, It was just another day. October 4th. In the first year we celebrated 1 week anniversaries, by the second I probably updated my status with something like “2 years in Lagos, and still standing” by the third I have to even beg people to believe that I can even blow grammer, let alone that I lived anywhere outside of Lagos. It got me thinking, Why do people have such pride in the fact that “Ah I’ve moved back o, been back a week”, It made me wonder if people hold onto their “moved back” status as some kind of validation, something to make them feel like they are somehow elite, among the cool crew, like they deserve extra praise and special treatment, an excuse to do whatever they like and claim it’s because they are in new territory, live without inhibitions, basking in the non-existent rays of their self awarded superiority.
I’m not bashing anybody here, because the truth is that back in the day I did it too, but as I have grown older, and wiser (if I say so myself), I see the futility of it all. This so called moved back club, whose members are meant to be the hope of Nigeria, bringing their western enlightenment, countless degrees, and the clout that comes with their privileged backgrounds to impact the society, have done nothing. I don’t know what everyone else sees, but I see that the roads are still the same, no industries have been transformed, the old wine skins still dominate our politics, people die daily from things as basic as childbirth, children go without an education. Nothing has changed. Yes the staff at Nail Place are getting bigger tips, Agip is filling bigger tanks, Heineken have launched the only beer that pops exclusively for this market, Champagne is being spilt like water, but the moved back club have added no real value to Nigeria.
So next time you are about to flash you platinum moved back club card, for fast track entry into the first class lounge, think about whether you have used it to do anything positive for your country
Food for thought
Xoxo.
Yes... “The moved back club”, if you no join am yet, make you pick race, space is running out, membership is no longer exclusive, na bronze card whey remain, no entry into the lounge.
The other day I was at the facial bar, while I was being pampered, I had the great pleasure of listening to a few girls outside in the reception, talking about the challenges they have faced since they MOVED BACK, “had to cut my facials to once a month”, “can’t keep up with the latest fashion trends”, “why do people keep asking me how my night was”...etc... and of course the entire conversation ends with “Well I have found to keep sane in this crazy city you have to get out as often as possible”. As I’m typing this I am cringing, because it sounds all too familiar.
As they spoke I remembered that my 3rd year anniversary with Lagos slipped by without my noticing, me and my city didn’t have a romantic dinner, exchange gifts, whisper sweet nothings, It was just another day. October 4th. In the first year we celebrated 1 week anniversaries, by the second I probably updated my status with something like “2 years in Lagos, and still standing” by the third I have to even beg people to believe that I can even blow grammer, let alone that I lived anywhere outside of Lagos. It got me thinking, Why do people have such pride in the fact that “Ah I’ve moved back o, been back a week”, It made me wonder if people hold onto their “moved back” status as some kind of validation, something to make them feel like they are somehow elite, among the cool crew, like they deserve extra praise and special treatment, an excuse to do whatever they like and claim it’s because they are in new territory, live without inhibitions, basking in the non-existent rays of their self awarded superiority.
I’m not bashing anybody here, because the truth is that back in the day I did it too, but as I have grown older, and wiser (if I say so myself), I see the futility of it all. This so called moved back club, whose members are meant to be the hope of Nigeria, bringing their western enlightenment, countless degrees, and the clout that comes with their privileged backgrounds to impact the society, have done nothing. I don’t know what everyone else sees, but I see that the roads are still the same, no industries have been transformed, the old wine skins still dominate our politics, people die daily from things as basic as childbirth, children go without an education. Nothing has changed. Yes the staff at Nail Place are getting bigger tips, Agip is filling bigger tanks, Heineken have launched the only beer that pops exclusively for this market, Champagne is being spilt like water, but the moved back club have added no real value to Nigeria.
So next time you are about to flash you platinum moved back club card, for fast track entry into the first class lounge, think about whether you have used it to do anything positive for your country
Food for thought
Xoxo.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Ladi{Poe}
I'm gonna let you in on something BIGGGGG.
Ladi{Poe} ... He's all that and a bag of chips!!! This is what music should be about!!!
Check "Get Me Home" out
http://www.lasgiditunes.com/song.php?id=1410
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
#Thankful
This post is a little late, I have been meaning to write it for nearly a month, but just haven’t been able to squeeze out the time.
This Sunday I had the opportunity to go to this Carol Service of 9 lessons, I guess this is something that people from the Anglican or Catholic Church are quite familiar with, but being Pentecostal it was pretty new to me. For those that do not know, this carol service is an annual initiative of the Nigerian Society for the Blind, they take the carol service to a different church every year. To begin with, I must admit, that I was not best pleased when I walked into church on Sunday morning to see that we’d be on our feet singing carols for an hour plus. But something struck me after about the 2nd carol, the actual joy, happiness, and gratitude that emanated from the “blind choir” (for lack of better terminology). In the midst of their misfortune and disability they still had joy. I am told that these choristers were all once able to see, but without any notice, in the middle of their very successful careers, they lost their sight. Some were lawyers, others bankers, chemists, students, etc. But their reality is now one of abject darkness.
Till Sunday I definitely took my sight for granted, seeing has always been something that I never considered a blessing, but that along with the many other things that we take for granted are not our rights to have, we have done nothing special to deserve many of the things that we have, so we must remain ever thankful to He who in his mercy gave us such blessings. In the midst of our very REAL needs, misfortune, and lack we must take the time out to count our blessings.
Here are some of the things that I am thankful for:
#Life – Many people go to sleep and just do not wake up in the morning, people die daily from cancer, lack of clean water kills many in Africa, yet I still stand
#Sight – The ability to behold the beauty that God has created is not a privilege that all enjoy
#Hearing – I love music, I love to hear the voices of the people I love, and I am grateful that I have that privilege
#Health – Not only am I alive, but I am not injecting myself daily with anything, I am not on a drip or any permanent medication
#Family – If I had a choice I could not pick better brothers than the ones I have, more caring and generous parents than my parents, and a great extended family that encourage me with their words and deeds
#Friends – Great friends make all the difference in Lagos, I may not have many but I appreciate and love all the ones that I do have, even if I don’t say it often, or act like it I really do
#Laughter – Laughter is medicine to the soul, I am thankful that I have a sense of humour, and I am surrounded with people that make me laugh
#Education – My mind is my greatest asset, and I am grateful that I have had an opportunity to enlighten it
#Accommodation – I am grateful for a roof over my head, I always complain that I don’t have enough wardrobe space, but there are many here in Lagos that have never ever had a bed of their own, a bathroom, let alone wardrobe space
#His Image – God created me in “his image”, and absolutely everything about me is beautiful, I may not see it all the time, others may not even see it at all, but it is a fact, We are all beautiful!!!!!
#Comfort – I am VERYYYYYY far from the richest person in the world or even my little corner of Lagos, but I am thankful that I am comfortable, I do not lack for the bare necessities of life and I even have a few perks
#Mentors – the saying goes “success has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan” I am extremely thankful that I have many exemplary people around me that I can learn from, that share with me their mistakes, pass on their tested strategies, and guide me through my own rough patches
This list can really go on for ages, because I am thankful for sooooooooooo much in my life, so I am going to jump to the last and the MOST IMPORTANT. I am thankful for...
...#Gods unconditional love – In my past failings, my present struggle, and my future shortcomings, one thing has and always will be constant God’s love. Words cannot express how thankful I am that no matter who I am and what I do, my future is guaranteed because of His love. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.
I suggest that in any spare minute you have today, you take the time out to write a list of all the things that you are thankful for, this small act will show us how blessed we are and how much we take for granted, whilst we concentrate on what we don’t have.
Xoxo.
This Sunday I had the opportunity to go to this Carol Service of 9 lessons, I guess this is something that people from the Anglican or Catholic Church are quite familiar with, but being Pentecostal it was pretty new to me. For those that do not know, this carol service is an annual initiative of the Nigerian Society for the Blind, they take the carol service to a different church every year. To begin with, I must admit, that I was not best pleased when I walked into church on Sunday morning to see that we’d be on our feet singing carols for an hour plus. But something struck me after about the 2nd carol, the actual joy, happiness, and gratitude that emanated from the “blind choir” (for lack of better terminology). In the midst of their misfortune and disability they still had joy. I am told that these choristers were all once able to see, but without any notice, in the middle of their very successful careers, they lost their sight. Some were lawyers, others bankers, chemists, students, etc. But their reality is now one of abject darkness.
Till Sunday I definitely took my sight for granted, seeing has always been something that I never considered a blessing, but that along with the many other things that we take for granted are not our rights to have, we have done nothing special to deserve many of the things that we have, so we must remain ever thankful to He who in his mercy gave us such blessings. In the midst of our very REAL needs, misfortune, and lack we must take the time out to count our blessings.
Here are some of the things that I am thankful for:
#Life – Many people go to sleep and just do not wake up in the morning, people die daily from cancer, lack of clean water kills many in Africa, yet I still stand
#Sight – The ability to behold the beauty that God has created is not a privilege that all enjoy
#Hearing – I love music, I love to hear the voices of the people I love, and I am grateful that I have that privilege
#Health – Not only am I alive, but I am not injecting myself daily with anything, I am not on a drip or any permanent medication
#Family – If I had a choice I could not pick better brothers than the ones I have, more caring and generous parents than my parents, and a great extended family that encourage me with their words and deeds
#Friends – Great friends make all the difference in Lagos, I may not have many but I appreciate and love all the ones that I do have, even if I don’t say it often, or act like it I really do
#Laughter – Laughter is medicine to the soul, I am thankful that I have a sense of humour, and I am surrounded with people that make me laugh
#Education – My mind is my greatest asset, and I am grateful that I have had an opportunity to enlighten it
#Accommodation – I am grateful for a roof over my head, I always complain that I don’t have enough wardrobe space, but there are many here in Lagos that have never ever had a bed of their own, a bathroom, let alone wardrobe space
#His Image – God created me in “his image”, and absolutely everything about me is beautiful, I may not see it all the time, others may not even see it at all, but it is a fact, We are all beautiful!!!!!
#Comfort – I am VERYYYYYY far from the richest person in the world or even my little corner of Lagos, but I am thankful that I am comfortable, I do not lack for the bare necessities of life and I even have a few perks
#Mentors – the saying goes “success has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan” I am extremely thankful that I have many exemplary people around me that I can learn from, that share with me their mistakes, pass on their tested strategies, and guide me through my own rough patches
This list can really go on for ages, because I am thankful for sooooooooooo much in my life, so I am going to jump to the last and the MOST IMPORTANT. I am thankful for...
...#Gods unconditional love – In my past failings, my present struggle, and my future shortcomings, one thing has and always will be constant God’s love. Words cannot express how thankful I am that no matter who I am and what I do, my future is guaranteed because of His love. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.
I suggest that in any spare minute you have today, you take the time out to write a list of all the things that you are thankful for, this small act will show us how blessed we are and how much we take for granted, whilst we concentrate on what we don’t have.
Xoxo.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A Reason, A Season or A Lifetime
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine (my namesake ;-)), about friendships, knowing when to let go, etc, etc, and I remembered a message that my cousin sent me a year ago, which I saved because it rang so true:
“When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed – to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you guidance and support, to aid you physically or emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you want them to be, then without any wrongdoing on your part, or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die, walk away, or do something to make you take a stand. We must realise that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, and their work is DONE, and it’s time to move on.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you never knew, and they bring us an unusual amount of joy. Believe it, it is real, but only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships, teach you lifetime lessons, things that you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.”
When we realise that people come into our life for: a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and when we know which one it is, we will know how to treat the person and free ourselves of the burden of worrying about what we could’ve done to make friends stay, or feeling guilt for growing out of a friendship. The key is to realise what we have learnt from the friendships and relationships that we have had. What we have learnt about ourselves, and what experiences we have had in our relationships that have helped us grow, taught us new things, and made us see the side of the coin that we never considered.
However hard it may have been to let go at the time, in hindsight I do not regret any of my friendships, because I have taken out the time to classify all my friendships, and I know what I have learnt about myself and about life from all the people that I am no longer as close to as I used to be. I truly believe that holding on to people for sentimental reasons when they have served their “purpose” in your life would inevitably be more painful than letting them go when it is time to.
While I think that this is true about all friendships and relationships in general, I read somewhere once (don’t remember where, but I stored it in my head), that men treat friendship like the sun, its existence not disputed, but its radiance best enjoyed from a distance. Couldn’t have put it better, sometimes some friendships are best enjoyed from a distance, and you can go out onto your lounge chair for a tan when you are feeling a bit pale.
xoxo.
“When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed – to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you guidance and support, to aid you physically or emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you want them to be, then without any wrongdoing on your part, or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die, walk away, or do something to make you take a stand. We must realise that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, and their work is DONE, and it’s time to move on.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you never knew, and they bring us an unusual amount of joy. Believe it, it is real, but only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships, teach you lifetime lessons, things that you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.”
When we realise that people come into our life for: a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and when we know which one it is, we will know how to treat the person and free ourselves of the burden of worrying about what we could’ve done to make friends stay, or feeling guilt for growing out of a friendship. The key is to realise what we have learnt from the friendships and relationships that we have had. What we have learnt about ourselves, and what experiences we have had in our relationships that have helped us grow, taught us new things, and made us see the side of the coin that we never considered.
However hard it may have been to let go at the time, in hindsight I do not regret any of my friendships, because I have taken out the time to classify all my friendships, and I know what I have learnt about myself and about life from all the people that I am no longer as close to as I used to be. I truly believe that holding on to people for sentimental reasons when they have served their “purpose” in your life would inevitably be more painful than letting them go when it is time to.
While I think that this is true about all friendships and relationships in general, I read somewhere once (don’t remember where, but I stored it in my head), that men treat friendship like the sun, its existence not disputed, but its radiance best enjoyed from a distance. Couldn’t have put it better, sometimes some friendships are best enjoyed from a distance, and you can go out onto your lounge chair for a tan when you are feeling a bit pale.
xoxo.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Lions
It’s quite interesting to note that in Nature a Lion never mates with anything other than a Lion. You will never find a Lion, the king of the animal kingdom, mating with a kitten or any other feeble feline animal; it will only ever mate with another LION. As basic as the concept may seem, All animals – human, canine, feline, reptile, whatever classifications you may have, will only ever mate with its own (well these days some people are sick sha – but in general that theory upholds).
Where am I going with this...
Well, lately I have found the conversation at dinner tables, drinks, and other social gatherings inevitably always ends up with a heated or composed (depending on what kinda circles you roll with, my circles go heated) discussion on what the role of a woman in society is, in marriage, how independent can you be and still fit in with Nigerian culture (and even biblical principles) of subservience, the threat of extinction for the independent woman if she truly wants to get married, how the powerful businessman is only looking for a trophy wife to sit at home bear children, get her nails, hair and eyelashes “did” so that she looks breathtaking standing next to him at his upcoming IBA conference.
It all got me thinking, is there a balance, is subservience the only way, knowing what culture presumes, churches preach, the Qur’an dictates, how much can women get away with, is there a balance between achieving your own goals and giving in to your female instincts, yada, yada, yada. I gave it some thought sha, didn’t lose any sleep, then one day the answer, (well my answer, because my philosophy is no hard and fast rule) was staring me in the face. Lions.
I shall try to avoid a biology lesson, especially as I am an amateur when it comes to the study of Lions. A lion the tallest of all living cats, typically described as the king of the animal kingdom, is a powerful animal, that stalks its prey with the decisive focus and precision that always results in success. Undoubtedly the Lion is feared by all other cats and is the crème de la crème of its genus. A lion will always mate with a Lioness. However powerful a tiger may be, no matter its feline prowess, sophistication, delicacy, cunning, what have you, it will never be candidate to mate with a Lion. Much in the same way a powerful, intelligent, successful, driven, cultured, well-mannered, handsome (if you like) man will only be attracted to his kind. In other words: Obama will only be attracted to a Michelle. While a Michelle may not display the raw characteristics of a lion, because she is a lioness, yet she possesses the innate characteristics of a lion, those characteristics that Nigerian women are afraid to show for fear of scaring away potential suitors – independence, hard work, dedication, unwavering support, out-of-the box thinking, and the list goes on. I don’t know about you but when a lioness roars, I go “pick race”, with the same speed and fear for my life as I would if it were a Lion, both na the same thing.
Just in case I have not made may my point clear enough – If you are an independent, confident, mentally strong (not strong headed), dedicated, hardworking, intelligent, excellence oriented woman with personal goals driven to succeed, then you needn’t worry about lacking the adequate husband, scaring the men away, because a lioness attracts another lion, and iron sharpens iron. That being said, a lioness still respects her lion, submits to his will, and uses her lion-characteristics to sharpen, challenge and ultimately build his own.
If you want a Lion, become a Lioness.
Yes I have totally ignored the fact that I haven’t blogged in a while: “Na condition wey make crayfish bend”
xoxo.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Connecting The Dots
Lately I have been thinking a lot about connecting the dots in life, finding my passion, living my dream, pursuing happiness, living up to my potential (which I can only hope that I have) etc. Because unfortunately this is one thing that you cannot get any help with, you have to dream your dream YOURSELF; make the decision to follow the dream YOURSELF; you must endure setbacks to that dream YOURSELF; and YOU must pick yourself up from all the challenges ALONE. When it comes to charting out your life’s path it is something that you largely do alone, people can advise you along the way, they can comfort you when you go through the ups and the downs, provide for you when you can’t provide for yourself, but finding that ONE thing that you were created to do, that will make you happy, the thing that all your life experiences has contributed towards shaping you for – can ONLY come from within YOU.
Some of us will be happiest making and selling akara at a street corner in okokomiko, for some of us being the iron lady that holds together a top investment bank epitomizes happiness, others find immeasurable happiness making others look beautiful by doing their make-up. What makes others happy will not necessarily make you happy, and what makes you happy will not make everyone else happy. Your life’s goal should be finding what and who makes YOU happy.
When I started writing this post yesterday afternoon I had planned on sharing excerpts of a speech I first heard a few years ago that has always motivated me, but given what happened in between my writing it and posting it I have decided to share the whole speech. It was the commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University. His words speak far better than I could on connecting the dots in life, and his life exemplified being successful at what you are passionate about, walking a road that nobody else has, daring to innovate and creating your own path.
I hope the speech motivates you as much as it always motivates me. It is long but well worth the read:
“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
Even as the world has just lost this entrepreneurial genius, I hope his life’s story continues to resonate.
RIP Steve Jobs
Xoxo.
Some of us will be happiest making and selling akara at a street corner in okokomiko, for some of us being the iron lady that holds together a top investment bank epitomizes happiness, others find immeasurable happiness making others look beautiful by doing their make-up. What makes others happy will not necessarily make you happy, and what makes you happy will not make everyone else happy. Your life’s goal should be finding what and who makes YOU happy.
When I started writing this post yesterday afternoon I had planned on sharing excerpts of a speech I first heard a few years ago that has always motivated me, but given what happened in between my writing it and posting it I have decided to share the whole speech. It was the commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University. His words speak far better than I could on connecting the dots in life, and his life exemplified being successful at what you are passionate about, walking a road that nobody else has, daring to innovate and creating your own path.
I hope the speech motivates you as much as it always motivates me. It is long but well worth the read:
“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
Even as the world has just lost this entrepreneurial genius, I hope his life’s story continues to resonate.
RIP Steve Jobs
Xoxo.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Leading Lady
If one thing can keep me glued to a screen it is a romantic comedy, all the drama, all the cheese, all the suspense, one liners (cheesy one liners at that). One thing I have noticed after over one hundred of these cheesy movies is that no matter how amazingly beautiful, intelligent, witty the supporting actress is, it’s always the leading lady that everyone is rooting for: She captivates her audience, we sympathize with her, we want to be her (because at the end she always wins), and if your tear ducts are anything like mine the leading lady makes us cry with the sort of happiness that smiling just cannot capture.
All that being said I really wonder why an increasing number of Nigerian ladies are positioning themselves to play the supporting role. People often say of Nigerian ‘ladies’ that they are not in any way deterred if they find out that the subject / object of their desire has a wife, fiancé, girlfriend, in actual fact this makes him more desirable to her because she see’s that he has the potential to be “tied down”.
Like I mentioned in one of my first blog posts, I don’t get why people go to nail bars or hair salons and talk without any inhibitions about the intricate details of their lives, by the time you leave you know their sisters name, how many trips they made to their GP last week, how their boyfriend insulted them by sending them a common blackberry curve as opposed to securing them one of the test iPhone 5’s that are not due in shops till early 2012. The topic of these Nail bar DMC’s has taken a large shift towards who your boyfriend is (married, or otherwise disposed boyfriend), what his category is - some boyfriends are for mtn credit (some for 500 Naira, others 3k, some 10k and above), some boyfriends are for handbags and shoes, others for exotic trips to Thailand, Brazil, Zanzibar some others for housing and accommodation, a child maybe if you want to make your funding life long. It seems to me that it has become the norm for people to play the supporting actress, the side dish, the other attraction, and they do so without shame. In the same way that no effort is taken to conceal the fact tha the long tresses tumbling down your back are in fact those borrowed (bought) off the head of a deceased Asian lady, no effort is taken to conceal being the girlfriend of a man that is not available.
I do not intend to pin blame for these shifting dynamics - is it the lady's (the term in this case I use loosely, as it is not synonymous with such behaviour) fault for accepting less than she deserves? or is it the mans fault for making himself available to more than one woman at any given time? It is not really a debate worth having. What is more important to note is that happiness and playing the supporting role are not easy bedmates, either the guilt of being the cause for someone elses pain or the knowledge that you are the sloppy seconds will slowly chip at all the happiness you think you are gaining.
Don’t be the footnote in somebody else’s love story, everybody IS the leading lady in their own life and should never ever settle for anything less. The role of supporting actress will always be on borrowed time, and I speak in no uncertain terms when i say that at some point the rental period will be up.
Xoxo.
All that being said I really wonder why an increasing number of Nigerian ladies are positioning themselves to play the supporting role. People often say of Nigerian ‘ladies’ that they are not in any way deterred if they find out that the subject / object of their desire has a wife, fiancé, girlfriend, in actual fact this makes him more desirable to her because she see’s that he has the potential to be “tied down”.
Like I mentioned in one of my first blog posts, I don’t get why people go to nail bars or hair salons and talk without any inhibitions about the intricate details of their lives, by the time you leave you know their sisters name, how many trips they made to their GP last week, how their boyfriend insulted them by sending them a common blackberry curve as opposed to securing them one of the test iPhone 5’s that are not due in shops till early 2012. The topic of these Nail bar DMC’s has taken a large shift towards who your boyfriend is (married, or otherwise disposed boyfriend), what his category is - some boyfriends are for mtn credit (some for 500 Naira, others 3k, some 10k and above), some boyfriends are for handbags and shoes, others for exotic trips to Thailand, Brazil, Zanzibar some others for housing and accommodation, a child maybe if you want to make your funding life long. It seems to me that it has become the norm for people to play the supporting actress, the side dish, the other attraction, and they do so without shame. In the same way that no effort is taken to conceal the fact tha the long tresses tumbling down your back are in fact those borrowed (bought) off the head of a deceased Asian lady, no effort is taken to conceal being the girlfriend of a man that is not available.
I do not intend to pin blame for these shifting dynamics - is it the lady's (the term in this case I use loosely, as it is not synonymous with such behaviour) fault for accepting less than she deserves? or is it the mans fault for making himself available to more than one woman at any given time? It is not really a debate worth having. What is more important to note is that happiness and playing the supporting role are not easy bedmates, either the guilt of being the cause for someone elses pain or the knowledge that you are the sloppy seconds will slowly chip at all the happiness you think you are gaining.
Don’t be the footnote in somebody else’s love story, everybody IS the leading lady in their own life and should never ever settle for anything less. The role of supporting actress will always be on borrowed time, and I speak in no uncertain terms when i say that at some point the rental period will be up.
Xoxo.
Monday, September 19, 2011
An Open Mind
It's remarkable how many things we miss out on in life because we have a closed mind about them.
We walk around with our pre-defined workplans for our lives, key milestones highlighted, timelines defined, a narrow contingency plan for backup(not so much a contingency as a lifejacket on a plane - you hope never to use it), responsible parties outlined and duly notified of their responsibilities. We know what we like, don't like, want, don't want, need, dont need, etc. and we don't bother exploring what else is out there if it doesn't fit nicely into what we have painstakingly defined.
It's good to know what you want, what you like, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what grinds on your nerves, who grinds on your nerves. It's good to know all these, but what room have we left for the unexpected, that one thing we 'thought' we didn't like probably because we never tried it, we thought it was too far out of our reach, too far beneath us, just not interesting ... You just never know the unexpected may surprise you and turn out to be exactly what you NEED.
The only constant thing in life is change. If change is constant then we can not constantly plan, we have to learn to adapt to what changes around us, keep an open mind for what could be, roll with the punches, and just generally experience life as it comes - without a strict workplan.
Free your mind and prepare to be surprised.
Xoxo
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Holding Position
I know I have been terribly aweful with blogging, but I have had a tonne on my plate, and it appears I am not as good at multitasking as I thought (something I no doubt got from my dad)
I have done a lot more air travel than I am comfortable with lately, I am naturally quite panicy so spending time in some airbus that I still don't fully understand the physics and mechanics of doesn't really sit so well with me. Flying into MMA on Friday evening, there was a backlog of flights (I am told this is a norm for Abuja -Lagos weekend flights), so my flight along with many others had to assume the 'holding position' as we approached Lagos. For those who do not know, the 'holding position' is an oval space just above the runway where airplanes 'circle' till they are given the go ahead from the control tower to make their final descent and land. Several planes can hold position at different altitudes at the same time.
As I sat 'holding position' in what I can only describe as a molue bus with wings, eager to just land get my luggage and begin my great weekend in Lagos, it struck me how remarkably similar this 'holding position' was to life. Many times we are trapped in a rut, frustrated by the fact that we can see where we are trying to get to, yet we continue to circle around it, unable to land when we want.
I never sit at the window seat, but I assume that from this holding position you may be able to see other planes landing on the runway leaving you behind constrained to a metal flying bus sitting next to the profusely sweating bus conductor, your ears popping from the cabin pressure, being shaken from place to place with turbulence (I doubt that at that altitude there is turbulence, but for the sake of this post let's assume that there is), freezing from the low temperatures on board, etc etc. I think I have painted a good enough picture there, the point I am making here is that life too is much like this. While we are weathering our storms, holding our position till finally it is our turn to land, we can see others landing in the place that we too are looking to land, we get discouraged, we sometimes get jealous, angry, faint, agitated. But what we do not know is how long the people landing were holding position before they landed, what kind of turbulence they had to endure, what the conditions were on board their boeing 737, what conditions they are going to meet when they eventually land. We focuson on the fact that they are landing before us. I think we have to trust that whoever (for some it's God, others it's Buddah, some others fate - I won't push my religious doctrines on you) is in our / the control tower knows when is the BEST time for us to land. Our control tower knows what the conditions on ground are, it knows what our Boeing can handle on ground or while holding position, and the control tower will make sure that we land JUST ON TIME.
My flight 'held position' for about 15 minutes on Friday evening, after much squirming and eye rolling we did land. Much in the same way I trust that we will all leave our holding positions and descend into our desires.
Xoxo.
I have done a lot more air travel than I am comfortable with lately, I am naturally quite panicy so spending time in some airbus that I still don't fully understand the physics and mechanics of doesn't really sit so well with me. Flying into MMA on Friday evening, there was a backlog of flights (I am told this is a norm for Abuja -Lagos weekend flights), so my flight along with many others had to assume the 'holding position' as we approached Lagos. For those who do not know, the 'holding position' is an oval space just above the runway where airplanes 'circle' till they are given the go ahead from the control tower to make their final descent and land. Several planes can hold position at different altitudes at the same time.
As I sat 'holding position' in what I can only describe as a molue bus with wings, eager to just land get my luggage and begin my great weekend in Lagos, it struck me how remarkably similar this 'holding position' was to life. Many times we are trapped in a rut, frustrated by the fact that we can see where we are trying to get to, yet we continue to circle around it, unable to land when we want.
I never sit at the window seat, but I assume that from this holding position you may be able to see other planes landing on the runway leaving you behind constrained to a metal flying bus sitting next to the profusely sweating bus conductor, your ears popping from the cabin pressure, being shaken from place to place with turbulence (I doubt that at that altitude there is turbulence, but for the sake of this post let's assume that there is), freezing from the low temperatures on board, etc etc. I think I have painted a good enough picture there, the point I am making here is that life too is much like this. While we are weathering our storms, holding our position till finally it is our turn to land, we can see others landing in the place that we too are looking to land, we get discouraged, we sometimes get jealous, angry, faint, agitated. But what we do not know is how long the people landing were holding position before they landed, what kind of turbulence they had to endure, what the conditions were on board their boeing 737, what conditions they are going to meet when they eventually land. We focuson on the fact that they are landing before us. I think we have to trust that whoever (for some it's God, others it's Buddah, some others fate - I won't push my religious doctrines on you) is in our / the control tower knows when is the BEST time for us to land. Our control tower knows what the conditions on ground are, it knows what our Boeing can handle on ground or while holding position, and the control tower will make sure that we land JUST ON TIME.
My flight 'held position' for about 15 minutes on Friday evening, after much squirming and eye rolling we did land. Much in the same way I trust that we will all leave our holding positions and descend into our desires.
Xoxo.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Violence is the Refuge of the Ignorant
I used to tease my mum when she would twist my ears for doing or saying something wrong, I’d say “violence is the refuge of the ignorant”... of course she thought it was rude. Whilst then it was just a JOKE, I believe it best describes what is going on in many boroughs in London, and across the United Kingdom. Ignorance, ignorant parenting, and disrespect for the law as a result of to ignorance to what it takes for good governance. Where there is ignorance, violence becomes the only mode of communication.
As street fires, petrol bombs, disgruntled teens and adults rioting without a cause swept across many areas of the United Kingdom, I did a quick mental analysis of the areas of London that were affected. I admit; it is a vast generalisation to say that most of these areas are home to a lot of the less privileged, less educated people living on benefits, etc, however for the sake of my argument let’s agree that they are. It begs the question is social welfare the best route for a nation.
The riots have been masked as being a protest against particular ethnic groups being picked on and treated wrongly, while that may or may not be the case, the riots have not been solely about that. After watching a series of interviews with the rioters stupid enough to show their face on television, it has become evident that there is no unifying cause, no message that the rioters want us to hear, no burning issue they want the prime ministers attention over. They just took an opportunity to collect what they haven’t worked for, as they always have.
These rioters have enjoyed a mandatory free education that while not as good as a private education is still GOOD, they enjoy free healthcare, uninterrupted power, pastoral care is also free on the NHS, free housing. In addition to all this if they are still unable to secure employment they collect fortnightly (or weekly, I’m not sure) benefits for food, a hoodie from primark(had to pop in a joke there), and for most alcohol, cigarettes, and on the odd week a spiky dog collar for those beasts they carry around London to scare people. This is the model I have always argued that we ought to follow in Nigeria. I thought that it was necessary for us to give out benefits, housing, and everything that a wealthy person can provide for themselves to those who can’t, but I am now being forced to reconsider this.
Whatever comes free is never valued. Perhaps if these rioters understood the importance of hard work to survive, if they hadn’t taken for granted the free education they enjoyed, and actually made the best of it, if they understood that they would be homeless if they didn’t work to pay rent, if they knew they would not have the luxuries of food and clothing that they have without a job perhaps they may have thought twice about taking to the streets to pilfer from a society that provides to them at no cost to themselves.
I will not change my position on the need for a social safety net in Nigeria so quickly, because we do still need to provide at the very least primary and secondary education for all, healthcare, power. However, we also need to consider that there are side effects to “free everything”. Free breeds disrespect, ignorance to the inside workings of a society and its government, and when the ignorance becomes full grown its only refuge is in violence.
Xoxo.
Disclaimer: I am not for a second suggesting all the people in the areas of rioting are uneducated and underproviledged as this is inaccurate, it was merely a generalisation made as food for thought on the issue of welfare, and I mean no offense by it.
As street fires, petrol bombs, disgruntled teens and adults rioting without a cause swept across many areas of the United Kingdom, I did a quick mental analysis of the areas of London that were affected. I admit; it is a vast generalisation to say that most of these areas are home to a lot of the less privileged, less educated people living on benefits, etc, however for the sake of my argument let’s agree that they are. It begs the question is social welfare the best route for a nation.
The riots have been masked as being a protest against particular ethnic groups being picked on and treated wrongly, while that may or may not be the case, the riots have not been solely about that. After watching a series of interviews with the rioters stupid enough to show their face on television, it has become evident that there is no unifying cause, no message that the rioters want us to hear, no burning issue they want the prime ministers attention over. They just took an opportunity to collect what they haven’t worked for, as they always have.
These rioters have enjoyed a mandatory free education that while not as good as a private education is still GOOD, they enjoy free healthcare, uninterrupted power, pastoral care is also free on the NHS, free housing. In addition to all this if they are still unable to secure employment they collect fortnightly (or weekly, I’m not sure) benefits for food, a hoodie from primark(had to pop in a joke there), and for most alcohol, cigarettes, and on the odd week a spiky dog collar for those beasts they carry around London to scare people. This is the model I have always argued that we ought to follow in Nigeria. I thought that it was necessary for us to give out benefits, housing, and everything that a wealthy person can provide for themselves to those who can’t, but I am now being forced to reconsider this.
Whatever comes free is never valued. Perhaps if these rioters understood the importance of hard work to survive, if they hadn’t taken for granted the free education they enjoyed, and actually made the best of it, if they understood that they would be homeless if they didn’t work to pay rent, if they knew they would not have the luxuries of food and clothing that they have without a job perhaps they may have thought twice about taking to the streets to pilfer from a society that provides to them at no cost to themselves.
I will not change my position on the need for a social safety net in Nigeria so quickly, because we do still need to provide at the very least primary and secondary education for all, healthcare, power. However, we also need to consider that there are side effects to “free everything”. Free breeds disrespect, ignorance to the inside workings of a society and its government, and when the ignorance becomes full grown its only refuge is in violence.
Xoxo.
Disclaimer: I am not for a second suggesting all the people in the areas of rioting are uneducated and underproviledged as this is inaccurate, it was merely a generalisation made as food for thought on the issue of welfare, and I mean no offense by it.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Regression
I got a forward email recently with pictures of Lagos back in the day, in the 60’s and 70’s...
...There were pavements, department stores, there was no filth lining the streets. I’ll go beyond the pictures and assume that people could walk across town without fear of armed robbery, being knocked over by a 12 year old okada driver and his passenger who is carrying 3 split unit air conditioners on his head, or fear of their car being engulfed in pot holes large enough to engulf them.
In the 60’s and 70’s we were on a journey somewhere and had we continued along that path, dare I say that we may have far superseded development in many parts of the world. Somewhere along the line our development was derailed by mass consumption of a cocktail of greed, uncontrollable population growth, oil money, and a double shot more greed. The previous generation traded the greater good for personal gain, and at the rate we are going the cocktail is becoming more potent. In years to come we may look back to the two-thousands and say... “wow the good old days”
At some point in history union bank had more sophisticated operations than HSBC (then Midland bank), whilst Midland was still using paper tickets, Union bank had some form of automation. We had clean beaches, attracting tourists from far and near, we had safe roads, and a clean environment. However somewhere along the line we went into regression, we started going ‘up the down staircase’, undid what was done, and drove further into under development. The story department store that once stood on broad street has been replaced with market stalls selling poor quality 2nd hand goods. I never went into Kingsway stores, but I am sure the merchandise in the store was Nigerian – My grandfather had a mini studio in there so by virtue of that I shall assume that other Nigerians sold their merchandise. We swapped home grown goods for made in China, our domestic products were no longer desired, and even if they had been there was no infrastructure to support it. We exchanged a maintenance culture for a cost cutting strategy. It is no longer noble to make an honest living with your skills and talents, it is more expedient to “go into politics”, trade – making a dollar out of 15 cents... And so the regressive spiral continued till we landed ourselves in this black hole, further and further inside a dark under-developed abyss.
A black hole where nothing works, yet we circle around the destruction, destitution and debris of a city once destined for greatness in our luxury cars, wearing luxury clothes, oblivious to the failed state we live in. It begs the question, how far back do we have to go before we actually notice how desperate our situation is. Perhaps till when we have regressed as far back as wearing tiger skin toga’s and sitting in mud caves rubbing sticks together to make fire. We have played politics for too long; we have free styled development for too long; it is about time we put aside the charade and realise that we are regressing at an incredible rate, we need to put a plan in place, we need to manage our population, solve our infrastructure, resuscitate our healthcare system, redefine our government, and most importantly fix our educational system. We can no longer wait for the government to do these things, we have given them 50 years. The private sector must begin to lead change, else in 30 years our generations will be sending emails with pictures of flooded streets, okada crowded bridges, lamenting about the good old days when we had 2 hours of light a month. It is never too late to be the great country that we could’ve been.
Xoxo.
...There were pavements, department stores, there was no filth lining the streets. I’ll go beyond the pictures and assume that people could walk across town without fear of armed robbery, being knocked over by a 12 year old okada driver and his passenger who is carrying 3 split unit air conditioners on his head, or fear of their car being engulfed in pot holes large enough to engulf them.
In the 60’s and 70’s we were on a journey somewhere and had we continued along that path, dare I say that we may have far superseded development in many parts of the world. Somewhere along the line our development was derailed by mass consumption of a cocktail of greed, uncontrollable population growth, oil money, and a double shot more greed. The previous generation traded the greater good for personal gain, and at the rate we are going the cocktail is becoming more potent. In years to come we may look back to the two-thousands and say... “wow the good old days”
At some point in history union bank had more sophisticated operations than HSBC (then Midland bank), whilst Midland was still using paper tickets, Union bank had some form of automation. We had clean beaches, attracting tourists from far and near, we had safe roads, and a clean environment. However somewhere along the line we went into regression, we started going ‘up the down staircase’, undid what was done, and drove further into under development. The story department store that once stood on broad street has been replaced with market stalls selling poor quality 2nd hand goods. I never went into Kingsway stores, but I am sure the merchandise in the store was Nigerian – My grandfather had a mini studio in there so by virtue of that I shall assume that other Nigerians sold their merchandise. We swapped home grown goods for made in China, our domestic products were no longer desired, and even if they had been there was no infrastructure to support it. We exchanged a maintenance culture for a cost cutting strategy. It is no longer noble to make an honest living with your skills and talents, it is more expedient to “go into politics”, trade – making a dollar out of 15 cents... And so the regressive spiral continued till we landed ourselves in this black hole, further and further inside a dark under-developed abyss.
A black hole where nothing works, yet we circle around the destruction, destitution and debris of a city once destined for greatness in our luxury cars, wearing luxury clothes, oblivious to the failed state we live in. It begs the question, how far back do we have to go before we actually notice how desperate our situation is. Perhaps till when we have regressed as far back as wearing tiger skin toga’s and sitting in mud caves rubbing sticks together to make fire. We have played politics for too long; we have free styled development for too long; it is about time we put aside the charade and realise that we are regressing at an incredible rate, we need to put a plan in place, we need to manage our population, solve our infrastructure, resuscitate our healthcare system, redefine our government, and most importantly fix our educational system. We can no longer wait for the government to do these things, we have given them 50 years. The private sector must begin to lead change, else in 30 years our generations will be sending emails with pictures of flooded streets, okada crowded bridges, lamenting about the good old days when we had 2 hours of light a month. It is never too late to be the great country that we could’ve been.
Xoxo.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
*Cracked Pots*
In the absence of time to frame my own words, I have borrowed some.
"An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water..Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.'The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?''That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.'For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.'"
Being quite cerebral I have devoted a lot of my thinking time to cataloguing my many cracks / flaws / what have you. This evening being one of them. So when I got an email with these words it struck a chord. Like myself and the cracked pot we all have flaws, thorns in our flesh, cracks that we try to cement over... We just need to realise that our strengths and our flaws are all working together to produce beautiful flowers (however long it takes the flowers to blossom).
Xoxo.
"An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water..Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.'The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?''That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.'For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.'"
Being quite cerebral I have devoted a lot of my thinking time to cataloguing my many cracks / flaws / what have you. This evening being one of them. So when I got an email with these words it struck a chord. Like myself and the cracked pot we all have flaws, thorns in our flesh, cracks that we try to cement over... We just need to realise that our strengths and our flaws are all working together to produce beautiful flowers (however long it takes the flowers to blossom).
Xoxo.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Emperors New Clothes
Lagos is the home of EFEEZY. EFEEEZY on crack even. And unfortunately I have to call my own people out here, us Yoruba’s are the worst for this. Our domestic product is “O wa mbe”. The literal translation for none Yoruba speakers is – “It is there” – i.e. That’s where the party’s at, that’s where all the happening people are at, and if you aint there then you just aint hip. This culture of Owambe has become so ingrained in the Nigerian psyche that people will go to any lengths to show that they too are ‘there’, they have arrived. I am not just talking about with parties, with life in general. It has become the norm for Nigerians to be showwwy people. We drive the flashiest cars on bad roads, wear the best clothes to shabby offices, We travel to the best places whilst our country lays in ruins. We always stand out in any crowd.
Recently I was watching an episode of the BBC documentary on Lagos, that followed the day to day life of some quite hard pressed Lagosians. The documentary (in my opinion) aimed to show the resilience of the Lagosian to overcome adversity. That was what I took away from it the first time I watched it. But the second time I watched it a few days ago what struck me was a side story of one of the workers at the dump who was quite literally scrambling for ends meet. However for his daughters 1st birthday he was insistent on throwing a massive birthday bash, and kept going on about how the whole community must respect him for that party. A few weeks back I also heard a story about a lady who lost her husband unexpectedly, he was the bread winner, and his death left the family in a very hard situation, however the wife insisted that she must throw a party far beyond her means and at the expense of the already struggling families’ future.
Whilst I understand the desire to celebrate the life of a child, or the memory of a life purloined by early death, I cannot claim to understand why we as Nigerians must go beyond our means to do so, push out the boat so far we can’t even swim out to reach it. We are so busy tooting our own horns, beating our chests, calling attention to ourselves, name dropping so people recognise us and our catalogue of achievements. We believe that if we shout enough about what we have, what we’ve done, where we’ve been, who we’ve met we will gain more respect. We parade proudly down the streets in our fictional regalia like the proverbial emperor in his new clothes seeking to be praised, acknowledged, accepted and revered.
True achievement, success, wealth (not money), happiness, and joy is silent, it whispers, its HUMBLE, it doesn’t call attention to itself, it is guided by a strong sense of values, it knows that there are many little boy’s that can see the emperors nakedness, and most importantly it does not need praise.
Somewhere along the line we (as Nigerians) have lost our values, we have placed more importance on material things, ostentatious displays, and grand facades. We need to re-route ourselves asap.
Xoxo.
p.s. Congratulations to my Absomaze cousin Dr. Eso on her graduation.
Recently I was watching an episode of the BBC documentary on Lagos, that followed the day to day life of some quite hard pressed Lagosians. The documentary (in my opinion) aimed to show the resilience of the Lagosian to overcome adversity. That was what I took away from it the first time I watched it. But the second time I watched it a few days ago what struck me was a side story of one of the workers at the dump who was quite literally scrambling for ends meet. However for his daughters 1st birthday he was insistent on throwing a massive birthday bash, and kept going on about how the whole community must respect him for that party. A few weeks back I also heard a story about a lady who lost her husband unexpectedly, he was the bread winner, and his death left the family in a very hard situation, however the wife insisted that she must throw a party far beyond her means and at the expense of the already struggling families’ future.
Whilst I understand the desire to celebrate the life of a child, or the memory of a life purloined by early death, I cannot claim to understand why we as Nigerians must go beyond our means to do so, push out the boat so far we can’t even swim out to reach it. We are so busy tooting our own horns, beating our chests, calling attention to ourselves, name dropping so people recognise us and our catalogue of achievements. We believe that if we shout enough about what we have, what we’ve done, where we’ve been, who we’ve met we will gain more respect. We parade proudly down the streets in our fictional regalia like the proverbial emperor in his new clothes seeking to be praised, acknowledged, accepted and revered.
True achievement, success, wealth (not money), happiness, and joy is silent, it whispers, its HUMBLE, it doesn’t call attention to itself, it is guided by a strong sense of values, it knows that there are many little boy’s that can see the emperors nakedness, and most importantly it does not need praise.
Somewhere along the line we (as Nigerians) have lost our values, we have placed more importance on material things, ostentatious displays, and grand facades. We need to re-route ourselves asap.
Xoxo.
p.s. Congratulations to my Absomaze cousin Dr. Eso on her graduation.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Pieces of String
Life is like a piece of string.
Different lengths, different colours, different textures, some thick, some thin. That’s what we are all like – DIFFERENT. Built to do different things, some lives are longer than others, some are like candles in the wind – blown out far too early, some people are born great, some people achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them, and others are supporters of the great, No one better than the other, everyone unique, and PERFECT for their own purpose.
Imagine wrapping a birthday gift with one of those thick industrial wire chords (a string of sorts). The wrapping paper will get damaged, the gift will no longer be concealed, and not to mention it will be an eye sore. Yet we do this every day. We try to be someone that we are not, achieve the things we were not born to achieve, reach heights that are not our destinies, follow paths that are not our own, beat someone at a race that isn’t ours (I could do a 100 meter sprint quite easily, but if I attempted a marathon I would collapse after the first half mile, only air lift go fit commot me from there). We do these things either in a bid to find happiness or in an attempt to impress someone else. And the result of that is even more severe unhappiness than you started off with.
One can NEVER (and I say in no uncertain terms) be good at what someone else is meant for, you can only ever be good at what YOU are meant to do. Mr. Me Too syndrome is a common Nigerian problem. Kabir just started a business selling boiled cows blood (I saw it on Welcome to Lagos), so you too must start selling boiled blood but instead you will go for ram blood, after all ram is more expensive your profit go pass his own. Your cousins best friend Lovette is making a killing from selling Armenian hair extensions, you too go start your own business, stick on Armenian eyebrows (everybody wants to look like the Kardashians shebi, why stop at their hair). Then you are shocked when you are badly in debt trying to copy somebody else’s’ well thought out idea.
We can’t all be investment bankers, we can’t all be top shot business school graduates, we can’t all be entrepreneurs, we can’t all be musicians, fashion designers, Computer nerds, high flying consultants, great graphic designers, Michelin starred chefs, or even actors... Find what your good at, and work yourself to death getting better at it, and making it succeed. That and only that will make you happy.
Xoxo.
Picture (KeywordPictures)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
My Bucket List
So recently everyone seems to be sharing with me what they have on their bucket list. I was having a chat with one of my fave people in the world (TJ) and I was telling her I just don’t have a bucket list, and it is really bad that there is nothing I am dying to do before I die (no pun intended).
I don’t want to jump out of a plane; I really may kick the bucket if I did that. I don’t want to run a marathon; I don’t see how that’s exciting. I don’t want to fly a plane; I am sure I will vom all over the cock pit. I’m just too much of a coward for all these over the top things. So I have spent the day thinking about a more me, down to earth, REALISTIC Bucket List.
1. So my biggest secret in the whole entire world, actually just my parents, my brothers, 1 of my cousins, the people my brothers have snitched to know this, and now YOU. But.... drumrolllllllllllll.... I never learnt to ride a bicycle. It’s the most ridiculous and single most embarrassing thing EVER. But I have an acute fear for failure, and both my brothers learnt to ride bicycles before me, and I just couldn’t cope with this, so I pretended that I knew how to ride one and I just wasn’t interested anymore because the challenging part was done with. THE TRUTH – I never learnt. I finally admitted this to Ads, himself and my dad tried to teach me last year but they both failed. Sooooooooo before I kick the bucket I would love to learn to ride a bike.
2. Three places I would really love to go to, but have never found a travelling buddy – Sao Paolo, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Not very exotic, but as you may have picked up I am extremely fascinated by the human mind, I think it’s the most amazing part of the human anatomy – and I think that my mind will be totally blown away in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Brazil just seems like a beautiful place, with beautiful people, awesome food, and great music
3. I’d love to have dinner at the Archipelago restaurant in London. Really not all that out there, always wanted to go, but I never get round to it.
4. This one is not as realistic as the rest, but I would love to win a Nobel Prize for Literature for the tour de force book I have written in my head. I won’t be disappointed with an Orange Booker Award though
5. I’d love to have a 1 hour segment / interview about me on CNN ... Not yet decided what about, nothing controversial though. I’m a bit Camera shy, but will work on that
6. I’d like to work at a magazine or media house, doing some kind of writing or editorial work, getting to interview and meet great minds, and sharpen my mind.
7. Three women (of colour) I have stalked online and greatly admire I can’t even explain why, they are just amazing to me. Michele Obama, Khanyi Dholmo, and Ndidi Nwuneli. I would love to have lunch with them some day. Separately. I will explode if I had to condense the questions I have for all of them into one lunch.
8. Like I said before I am a bit of a coward so I won’t ever jump out of a plane but i’d like to deep dive or something, swim with dolphins etc. I think that’ll be pretty amazing
9. I’d like to learn some random languages.
10. I have a burning ache (for lack of a better word) for under privileged children, that have no hope for a better future, poor educations, kids that have been robbed of their childhoods because of circumstance(they can’t ride bicycles cause they don’t have any not because they were too scared to), ill kids in pain, I’d like to do something to better their situations and lot in life
11. I’d love to see the Egyptian pyramids. The mental work that would have gone into designing the pyramids really amazes me.
12. I also want to go to Pompeii, a bit random but I missed a school trip there once and always wanted to go at some point
13. I’d like to go on a hot air balloon ride thing overlooking a Safari in Kenya or something.
14. I don’t want to climb mount Everest, but I would like to be taken up in some kind of helicopter or whatever flies up that high, air lifted and dropped off so I can see the view from up there
15. I want to cross a long wooden bridge over a large drop, like you see in films (like in Thor, but with wood and string); I dream about this a lot actually. It’ll be a bit scary but the adrenalin rush will be awesome.
16. I want to go to L.A. Never been to the west coast before. Quite keen to go.
17. I want to have 2 kids. (A girl and A boy)
18. I’d love to genuinely laugh until I cry plenty more times than I already have
19. Just because I diss them so much I’d like to get a hair weave, even if its just for 10 minutes
20. I’d like to make my parents realllllly happy, by giving them something that they have always wanted (See number 17 mum – pick something else)
annnnnndddddd.... I'd like to share a massive secret with the world, that must be liberating!!!! I guess I can cross that one off now (see number 1)
I’m gonna stop there, that’s as much personal sharing as I care to do, the rest are far too hilarious and / or personal for blogs. But I will keep working on my bucket list over the next few days, months, years as TJ pointed out in our chat, it is very amusing / thought provoking.
What’s on your bucket list????????
Xoxo.
I don’t want to jump out of a plane; I really may kick the bucket if I did that. I don’t want to run a marathon; I don’t see how that’s exciting. I don’t want to fly a plane; I am sure I will vom all over the cock pit. I’m just too much of a coward for all these over the top things. So I have spent the day thinking about a more me, down to earth, REALISTIC Bucket List.
1. So my biggest secret in the whole entire world, actually just my parents, my brothers, 1 of my cousins, the people my brothers have snitched to know this, and now YOU. But.... drumrolllllllllllll.... I never learnt to ride a bicycle. It’s the most ridiculous and single most embarrassing thing EVER. But I have an acute fear for failure, and both my brothers learnt to ride bicycles before me, and I just couldn’t cope with this, so I pretended that I knew how to ride one and I just wasn’t interested anymore because the challenging part was done with. THE TRUTH – I never learnt. I finally admitted this to Ads, himself and my dad tried to teach me last year but they both failed. Sooooooooo before I kick the bucket I would love to learn to ride a bike.
2. Three places I would really love to go to, but have never found a travelling buddy – Sao Paolo, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Not very exotic, but as you may have picked up I am extremely fascinated by the human mind, I think it’s the most amazing part of the human anatomy – and I think that my mind will be totally blown away in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Brazil just seems like a beautiful place, with beautiful people, awesome food, and great music
3. I’d love to have dinner at the Archipelago restaurant in London. Really not all that out there, always wanted to go, but I never get round to it.
4. This one is not as realistic as the rest, but I would love to win a Nobel Prize for Literature for the tour de force book I have written in my head. I won’t be disappointed with an Orange Booker Award though
5. I’d love to have a 1 hour segment / interview about me on CNN ... Not yet decided what about, nothing controversial though. I’m a bit Camera shy, but will work on that
6. I’d like to work at a magazine or media house, doing some kind of writing or editorial work, getting to interview and meet great minds, and sharpen my mind.
7. Three women (of colour) I have stalked online and greatly admire I can’t even explain why, they are just amazing to me. Michele Obama, Khanyi Dholmo, and Ndidi Nwuneli. I would love to have lunch with them some day. Separately. I will explode if I had to condense the questions I have for all of them into one lunch.
8. Like I said before I am a bit of a coward so I won’t ever jump out of a plane but i’d like to deep dive or something, swim with dolphins etc. I think that’ll be pretty amazing
9. I’d like to learn some random languages.
10. I have a burning ache (for lack of a better word) for under privileged children, that have no hope for a better future, poor educations, kids that have been robbed of their childhoods because of circumstance(they can’t ride bicycles cause they don’t have any not because they were too scared to), ill kids in pain, I’d like to do something to better their situations and lot in life
11. I’d love to see the Egyptian pyramids. The mental work that would have gone into designing the pyramids really amazes me.
12. I also want to go to Pompeii, a bit random but I missed a school trip there once and always wanted to go at some point
13. I’d like to go on a hot air balloon ride thing overlooking a Safari in Kenya or something.
14. I don’t want to climb mount Everest, but I would like to be taken up in some kind of helicopter or whatever flies up that high, air lifted and dropped off so I can see the view from up there
15. I want to cross a long wooden bridge over a large drop, like you see in films (like in Thor, but with wood and string); I dream about this a lot actually. It’ll be a bit scary but the adrenalin rush will be awesome.
16. I want to go to L.A. Never been to the west coast before. Quite keen to go.
17. I want to have 2 kids. (A girl and A boy)
18. I’d love to genuinely laugh until I cry plenty more times than I already have
19. Just because I diss them so much I’d like to get a hair weave, even if its just for 10 minutes
20. I’d like to make my parents realllllly happy, by giving them something that they have always wanted (See number 17 mum – pick something else)
annnnnndddddd.... I'd like to share a massive secret with the world, that must be liberating!!!! I guess I can cross that one off now (see number 1)
I’m gonna stop there, that’s as much personal sharing as I care to do, the rest are far too hilarious and / or personal for blogs. But I will keep working on my bucket list over the next few days, months, years as TJ pointed out in our chat, it is very amusing / thought provoking.
What’s on your bucket list????????
Xoxo.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Nyne to Fyve
As I sat in my car this morning, with the standard drone of a gazillion horns, the occasional flashing light of an okada coming full speed towards my car the wrong way down the road, driver shouting “something do you” to other road users, when in actual fact he was in the wrong, I wondered what more life had to offer than the monotony of a Nine to Five.
A lot of people do things because they believe it is the right thing to do, the natural next step. As they sit in their cars on their daily commutes they plan, or shall I say fantasize about their futures, the tour de force they are going to write, the great artist that they are going to become, the platinum album they are going to release, the social reforms they are going to lead, the retail clothing brand they are going to start. The list is endless. But they are all fantasies till you start working on achieving them.
“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”... Before you know it you have spent the best years of your life in the morning rush hour on Kingsway road, or on the Lekki axes, you have consumed truck loads of coffee beans in an attempt to give you that buzz for the days tasks ahead, you have daydreamed through brainstorming meetings, produced trees worth of paperwork none to do with your mighty plans for the future. Life has happened while you were procrastinating, while you were comfortable just being.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so take that first step and follow your dreams, you will only have yourself to blame when you are in your mid 50’s and full of “what if’s”. I am not suggesting anybody quits their jobs and goes crazy o, just do what makes you happy, or at least have it in sight and within reach. Having said that if your life’s ambition is to get suited and booted every day, crisp shirt, tight tie, money hitting your account every 3rd week of the month - nothing do you, keep doing what you do :)
p.s. – I am absolutely loving http://fusionme.tv at the moment. It’s the new destination for the best Nigerian videos on the internet, check it out.
Xoxo.
A lot of people do things because they believe it is the right thing to do, the natural next step. As they sit in their cars on their daily commutes they plan, or shall I say fantasize about their futures, the tour de force they are going to write, the great artist that they are going to become, the platinum album they are going to release, the social reforms they are going to lead, the retail clothing brand they are going to start. The list is endless. But they are all fantasies till you start working on achieving them.
“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”... Before you know it you have spent the best years of your life in the morning rush hour on Kingsway road, or on the Lekki axes, you have consumed truck loads of coffee beans in an attempt to give you that buzz for the days tasks ahead, you have daydreamed through brainstorming meetings, produced trees worth of paperwork none to do with your mighty plans for the future. Life has happened while you were procrastinating, while you were comfortable just being.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so take that first step and follow your dreams, you will only have yourself to blame when you are in your mid 50’s and full of “what if’s”. I am not suggesting anybody quits their jobs and goes crazy o, just do what makes you happy, or at least have it in sight and within reach. Having said that if your life’s ambition is to get suited and booted every day, crisp shirt, tight tie, money hitting your account every 3rd week of the month - nothing do you, keep doing what you do :)
p.s. – I am absolutely loving http://fusionme.tv at the moment. It’s the new destination for the best Nigerian videos on the internet, check it out.
Xoxo.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Nigerian Social Etiquette
I think I will forever be bemused by new age Nigerian ‘greeting’ etiquette.
The rules in general for greeting people when in public are:
• Greet all people who you deem to be socially superior to you. 3 kisses on the cheek is preferable, 2 will suffice if you are hard pressed for time (i.e. there is another socially superior person about to leave the gathering and you must be seen talking to them before they leave). Quite simply put – Greeting for Social Climbing (Read *Mountaineering *) purposes is key
• It is not compulsory to say hello to somebody even if you have them on your bb, have 73 mutual friends, you are family friends, you spent the whole of the last weekend at their beach house schmoozing with their business partners (they were useful then, assess whether making public your acquaintance will be useful to you now)
• Do not approach anybody sitting alone. They are clearly segregated from the group for a reason. Do not associate yourself with them, it will not work out well
• It is not necessary to say hi to the host of whatever event you are at. Most likely you are not there for them, you are just there for the free drinks, food, and to be seen with their cool friends
• It is absolutely ok to walk up to a group of people chatting, say hi to the person you know and ignore the rest
• You do not have to introduce the person you came with to all your other friends. If they don’t already know them you should already be feeling ashamed for bring an *unknown* out
• It is ok to be over familiar with people you have only just met. Pass sly and acidic comments about their hair do, their lisp, or their wardrobe choices, it is very becoming.
• As a guy it is perfectly ok to barge through a door in front of all the women waiting to pass through it (at the end of the day it’s not like she is your girlfriend or some girl you like – you need only turn on the charm when she is)
• It’s ok to just ignore someone when they say hi to you if you just don’t fell like talking to them
• It gives you more swag points to just pretend that nobody else but you exists
• If the person you are ‘greeting’ doesn’t know who you are, it is expected that you tell them how much of a “bix bwoy” or “bix gel” you are, while you’re at it tell them your annual income, who you parents are, your island mansion co-ordinates this will come in handy to ensure they remember you next time
• Being a sycophant is totally ok, being obsequious will pay off when he/she becomes governor or minister of oil and gas in 10 years, can you spell *CONTRACT*
• It is absolutely ok to have MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER, because you said hi to them last night, doesn’t mean you have to today, because yesterday you were the intelligent independent woman setting up an NGO to help orphaned girls realise their potential to achieve greatness without any man, doesn’t mean that today you can’t be the damsel in distress who cannot lift a single finger without assistance. Play it by ear, it’s all just a spot of acting.
I hope you found those rules just as ridiculous as I find watching people who actually follow them on a daily basis. Next time just say “Hi”. 1. Life just isn’t that serious. 2. You are not all that important. 3. They won’t bite (well some may, but if they do you can just bite back).
Xoxo.
The rules in general for greeting people when in public are:
• Greet all people who you deem to be socially superior to you. 3 kisses on the cheek is preferable, 2 will suffice if you are hard pressed for time (i.e. there is another socially superior person about to leave the gathering and you must be seen talking to them before they leave). Quite simply put – Greeting for Social Climbing (Read *Mountaineering *) purposes is key
• It is not compulsory to say hello to somebody even if you have them on your bb, have 73 mutual friends, you are family friends, you spent the whole of the last weekend at their beach house schmoozing with their business partners (they were useful then, assess whether making public your acquaintance will be useful to you now)
• Do not approach anybody sitting alone. They are clearly segregated from the group for a reason. Do not associate yourself with them, it will not work out well
• It is not necessary to say hi to the host of whatever event you are at. Most likely you are not there for them, you are just there for the free drinks, food, and to be seen with their cool friends
• It is absolutely ok to walk up to a group of people chatting, say hi to the person you know and ignore the rest
• You do not have to introduce the person you came with to all your other friends. If they don’t already know them you should already be feeling ashamed for bring an *unknown* out
• It is ok to be over familiar with people you have only just met. Pass sly and acidic comments about their hair do, their lisp, or their wardrobe choices, it is very becoming.
• As a guy it is perfectly ok to barge through a door in front of all the women waiting to pass through it (at the end of the day it’s not like she is your girlfriend or some girl you like – you need only turn on the charm when she is)
• It’s ok to just ignore someone when they say hi to you if you just don’t fell like talking to them
• It gives you more swag points to just pretend that nobody else but you exists
• If the person you are ‘greeting’ doesn’t know who you are, it is expected that you tell them how much of a “bix bwoy” or “bix gel” you are, while you’re at it tell them your annual income, who you parents are, your island mansion co-ordinates this will come in handy to ensure they remember you next time
• Being a sycophant is totally ok, being obsequious will pay off when he/she becomes governor or minister of oil and gas in 10 years, can you spell *CONTRACT*
• It is absolutely ok to have MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER, because you said hi to them last night, doesn’t mean you have to today, because yesterday you were the intelligent independent woman setting up an NGO to help orphaned girls realise their potential to achieve greatness without any man, doesn’t mean that today you can’t be the damsel in distress who cannot lift a single finger without assistance. Play it by ear, it’s all just a spot of acting.
I hope you found those rules just as ridiculous as I find watching people who actually follow them on a daily basis. Next time just say “Hi”. 1. Life just isn’t that serious. 2. You are not all that important. 3. They won’t bite (well some may, but if they do you can just bite back).
Xoxo.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Failing Forward
Yesterday morning I was talking to a friend, and I said to him “I think I’ve made all the mistakes I want to make in life” ... and he says whether you want to or not, we never stop making mistakes, and these mistakes will eventually make you a sage. Very wise words.
The same applies to failing. The more you fail, the better you become at what you failed at, because you have a catalogue of the ways not to do it. I will be the first to admit that I have a fear of failure. Not really because I think that life will be over if I fail at something, more because I feel like after putting in all the effort it’s only fair that you don’t fail at it. I just want to do great the first time, and skip all the in between phase. However the way to the greatest heights is through the greatest depths – “There are depths for heights”. If you are afraid of the depths, you *maybe* don’t deserve the heights #JustSayin’.
The truth is that you haven’t failed until you stop trying. “Winners lose more than losers do”, but they become winners, because they weren’t content to just call it a day. They sharpened their knives with their adversity, failures, misfortunes, and went in for the kill again.
It took 10000 tries for the light bulb; Alexander Fleming failed countless times before Penicillin; It took several attempts to put the first man on the moon; Before Boeing 747 there were the Wright brothers; Before Fashola there was ******. The truth is that the best inventions, the greatest minds, and the most formidable achievements / successes failed before they succeeded. I mean wouldn’t you flip the channel if you watched someone who made the greatest discovery after the first try – that’s no story.
So when you fail - try again, fail again, fail better.
Xoxo.
The same applies to failing. The more you fail, the better you become at what you failed at, because you have a catalogue of the ways not to do it. I will be the first to admit that I have a fear of failure. Not really because I think that life will be over if I fail at something, more because I feel like after putting in all the effort it’s only fair that you don’t fail at it. I just want to do great the first time, and skip all the in between phase. However the way to the greatest heights is through the greatest depths – “There are depths for heights”. If you are afraid of the depths, you *maybe* don’t deserve the heights #JustSayin’.
The truth is that you haven’t failed until you stop trying. “Winners lose more than losers do”, but they become winners, because they weren’t content to just call it a day. They sharpened their knives with their adversity, failures, misfortunes, and went in for the kill again.
It took 10000 tries for the light bulb; Alexander Fleming failed countless times before Penicillin; It took several attempts to put the first man on the moon; Before Boeing 747 there were the Wright brothers; Before Fashola there was ******. The truth is that the best inventions, the greatest minds, and the most formidable achievements / successes failed before they succeeded. I mean wouldn’t you flip the channel if you watched someone who made the greatest discovery after the first try – that’s no story.
So when you fail - try again, fail again, fail better.
Xoxo.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Creative Energy Abused
I am no longer content to just sit at my desk, pretending to focus on what’s behind my computer screen, whereas all that going through my head is: “What on earth are you wearing”
I think the most important thing to note here is that you are at WORK.... not a party, not a wedding, not a fashion show, not a museum for hideous outfits ...its WORK. Yes you have the right to funkify your work wardrobe a bit, but there is a big difference between funky-professional and funky-you-got-it-WRONG.
Ladies:
• Hooker shoes are inappropriate. I know that some of us that are naturally tall can sometimes intimidate those that are vertically challenged. This however does not permit you to wear 12 inch bright red shoes with a thick platform at the front, that is only appropriate for ladies working the streets. Silk or netty shoes are also a no go area for the tall or for the short, I don’t claim to be an arbiter on fashion, but im just gonna put this out there – colours like Bright purple, red, yellow, turquoise, fuchsia, lime green are best kept for the weekend, and I dare say some shouldn’t even be worn at all.
• Silk frilly tops. There may be some that are appropriate, but I believe all guilty parties know the sort that I mean. This sort of top is very nice to wear to a nice romantic dinner, or to a banquet, an evening garden wedding reception, or some other formal event. But for the office, you and I both know this is wrong. I would advise you spice up your social life so that the office is no longer your only avenue for showing off your pretty tops
• Party tops. Couldn’t think of a better way to describe this. Party tops include sheer tops, tops that expose more cleavage than is necessary for daylight hours, tops with gold streaks, silver streaks, cropped tops may be the vogue, but it isn’t office cool, tight tops that squeeze all the blood in your body to your head, sequined tops, i believe you get the picture. This is totally not for work. Well if you worked as a magician’s assistant then perhaps, but for all other formal types of work in an office with a desk that has a formal dress code, I will desist from wearing these if I were you.
• Dresses. Goes without saying, but the dress you wore to deuces on Friday should not be worn on Monday, aside from hygienic reasons; I am guessing it is not appropriate. I am in no position to talk about dresses above the knee, but there is above the knee that just negates anything you have to say, because people are focused on how you look and not what you’re saying. In the workplace you should be admired for what comes out of your mouth, and what’s between your two ears, not the amount of skin you show, how long your legs are, or how much cleavage you let hang out. Aside from length concerns: If it’s not your size, get the size up, if the lycra is slack, chuck it, if it is transparent wear a slip (if you own one – I never did till my mum forced one on me – seems rather middle aged, but if it prevents us from seeing your underwear, I am in support).
• Hair / Makeup. Again, I have no authority in this area. But I will say this: Because Beyonce wore a particular hair style to perform at the MTV Awards, does not make it appropriate for everyday wear. It was for a PERFORMANCE, a SHOW, not an everyday hair style. Same applies to make up, camel lashes however pretty they make you look, are not for everyday wear. Even people in Hollywood do not wear them daily; I don’t know how it became acceptable here. I know my E-doll doesn’t agree, but eye shadow during the daytime (pinks, purples, blues) are not appropriate, perhaps nude colours can be excused, but i don’t think it is very professional for your face to look like a painters canvas at a high powered meeting.
You may think you look nice wearing all this to work, others may tell you that you look nice, I’m not saying that you don’t, all I’m saying is it is not appropriate for work. Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication. If you have no elegant work appropriate clothes in your wardrobe may I suggest you visit the folk at #Grey, they will sort you out.
GENTLEMEN:
No you haven’t gotten away. You make some office faux pas too. Significantly less than the ladies, but worthy of a mention.
• It’s very easy to believe that nobody will notice that you are wearing the same suit every day. It may be black, but we noticed. Please endeavour to dry clean once in a while, and maybe throw in some greys, tans, navy blue trousers and blazers every once in a while.
• Be brave with your shirt choices, but curb your excitement a bit ... those shirts that have a bit of a shine to them, silk patterned shirts, lime greens are extremely unattractive, pink is nice, I would shy away from fuchsia though.
• Tight trousers. If they pucker at the pockets they are not your size. Enough said.
• This is just my personal opinion, not sure what the general perception on this one is: but wearing a bow tie to work EVERYDAY, or even at all is VERY hard to pull off. Please do not attempt this if you cannot carry it off.
• Traditional on Fridays – you can recycle, but maybe don’t wear the same one every Friday, there are some prints that are clearly more feminine than masculine – avoid these, rubber nike slippers with trad is in no way acceptable, its dress down, but you are not selling gum at the corner of the street, so please endeavour to look a bit professional.
Have fun with getting dressed for work, get creative, but don’t go parking diagonally in a parallel universe – That is an abuse of your creative energy.
Xoxo.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Life is SHORT
Every now and again something tragic happens and it really shakes me into the sad realisation that life is very very short. For a couple of months after the tragic event I try my hardest to live everyday as if it were my last, but somewhere along the line I start taking life for granted again. I think it’s very important that we all realise that every single second that we live is a gift, we must cherish it, be grateful for it, and never take it for granted.
• Appreciate all your friends. Tell them when you miss them, forgive them when they offend you, apologise when you offend them
• If you love someone tell them. They may be here today, and not tomorrow. So while they’re here make sure they know how you feel
• If you love someone show it. Go that extra mile to put your words into action
• Smile. Life is too short to be unhappy
• Follow your dreams. Do what you want to do NOW, because tomorrow may just never come
• Give to the less privileged. We cannot take any of our material possessions with us to the next world, so while we can we should share what we have with others. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and give shelter to the homeless
• Say Thank You. Simple two words that mean sooooooo much
• Say sorry. Admit it when you are wrong
• Don’t hold grudges, it really isn’t worth it
• Tell the truth always. It is better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie
• Take Chances. It’s always better to look back and wish you hadn’t done it, than to look back and wish you had. Sometimes the beauty is in the attempt
• Treat people like you would like to be treated
• Let go of your past hurts, and focus on building a better tomorrow
• Trust people – Share your concerns and your dreams, because they just may be going through the same thing or went through the same thing. Take off your hard as stone masks, before they become your face
• Send out a nice bouquet of thoughts to those you care about whenever you think about them
• Find someone to share your life with. Success and happiness is nothing if you have nobody to share it with
• And most importantly we must remember that: “TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN”. A relationship with God is the most important relationship you will EVER have or EVER need
Life is very short, make sure that yours counts. Make sure that you are remembered fondly, missed dearly, and thought of daily. Live your life so that it’s worthy of a segment on CNN.
And for those that we have lost too soon I pray that their souls will rest in perfect peace.
Xoxo.
• Appreciate all your friends. Tell them when you miss them, forgive them when they offend you, apologise when you offend them
• If you love someone tell them. They may be here today, and not tomorrow. So while they’re here make sure they know how you feel
• If you love someone show it. Go that extra mile to put your words into action
• Smile. Life is too short to be unhappy
• Follow your dreams. Do what you want to do NOW, because tomorrow may just never come
• Give to the less privileged. We cannot take any of our material possessions with us to the next world, so while we can we should share what we have with others. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and give shelter to the homeless
• Say Thank You. Simple two words that mean sooooooo much
• Say sorry. Admit it when you are wrong
• Don’t hold grudges, it really isn’t worth it
• Tell the truth always. It is better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie
• Take Chances. It’s always better to look back and wish you hadn’t done it, than to look back and wish you had. Sometimes the beauty is in the attempt
• Treat people like you would like to be treated
• Let go of your past hurts, and focus on building a better tomorrow
• Trust people – Share your concerns and your dreams, because they just may be going through the same thing or went through the same thing. Take off your hard as stone masks, before they become your face
• Send out a nice bouquet of thoughts to those you care about whenever you think about them
• Find someone to share your life with. Success and happiness is nothing if you have nobody to share it with
• And most importantly we must remember that: “TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN”. A relationship with God is the most important relationship you will EVER have or EVER need
Life is very short, make sure that yours counts. Make sure that you are remembered fondly, missed dearly, and thought of daily. Live your life so that it’s worthy of a segment on CNN.
And for those that we have lost too soon I pray that their souls will rest in perfect peace.
Xoxo.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Staring a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Sometimes I wonder if we are all so preoccupied with the things that we want, the lives we have planned for ourselves, the people we want to share our lives with. etc. ; that we sometimes miss out on the things that could potentially make us happier than the things that we have always dreamed of. Are we just “staring a gift horse in the mouth”?
A lot of us are gifted with things, people, circumstances, talents, opportunities etc that we do not deserve, and would not normally be able to afford, but we pick at their faults, shortcomings and general inappropriateness. We are literally staring a gift horse in the mouth, counting all the teeth, checking the tonsils, looking at the health of the gums, searching for mouth ulcers. We are cataloguing the faults, and paying no attention to the upsides.
The 21st century has promoted people being so consumed with their ‘lusts’, that when great things walk into their lives they neglect them, overly criticise them, and let them walk out again. We don’t seem to realise that life isn’t about having everything you want, exactly as you want, it is about taking what you’ve got, making the best of it, and committing to continually working on making what you have better. Perhaps when you are content with what you have, the very thing you want may come easier.
So if you are staring a gift horse in the mouth, slowly step down from your pedestal, put away your magnifying glass, and get back in the saddle.
xoxo.
Follow my blog with bloglovin
Monday, May 23, 2011
Parade of the frogs
It is universally acknowledged (well by people that believe in fairytales at least) that you have to kiss a lot of frogs (figuratively, literally) before you find your prince. Not to have a dig on Nigerian men (I am aware that I do this far more than I intend), but sometimes there is such a down pouring of frogs, it becomes more of a parade of the frogs; A festival of the weird and wonderful, a circus of the bizarre and the unnecessary brave, a bazaar of the unique and the colourfully different. All the frogs showing their most elaborate and well practiced stunts, cartwheels, frog jumps (quite apt), walking on stilts, wearing the most elaborate of costumes, clown shoes, and red noses, all in a bid to get a kiss from a princess who hopes they will magically morph into a prince. Unfortunately she is not aware that a frog can never be a prince, if he wasn’t first a prince that was turned into a frog. (Yeah that sentence confused me too). This is not to say that there are no princes, just that you have to go through a few frogs to find them.
Anyhows, I had quite a funny conversation with my friend, whose name I shall protect, but you know yourself, and it became quite apparent that depending on how long you have had to watch this parade, sit through the gnarly monologues (I say gnarly because some of them are so deceitfully good), and answer irrelevant questions, dating in Lagos is a chore, akin to studying for a quantum mechanics exam. Myself, X, my mum and my brother had quite a laugh at some of the things people say, ask, do, and I thought to myself that we laugh at it now, but the people that do these things are blissfully unaware of their inappropriateness. So being the niccccceee person that I am (*blushes*) I am gonna let you know what you should not do on a date if you genuinely want a second one. You may have been X’s frog, but you can still be Y’s prince.
• Numero Uno. Personally I believe you can learn a lot more about a person in an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation. You most certainly then cannot learn very much about a person by hosting an formal styled interview with them. Honestly there is no value add to you on a first date asking things like: What is your favourite colour?? (Why do you need to know this), How many siblings do you have? Or any other family questions? (We are not planning the wedding train just yet), What is your favourite day of the week? What MTN plan do you have? How many guys / girls have you dated? These are non value add questions. Just as you may get offended if we asked “How much do you get paid”, “What are your 10 year career plans” we also get offended by these daft questions
• Do not underestimate the Lagos grapevine. There is really nooooooo point in creating a false identity. You will be found out. If you sit on your backside day in day out, do not claim to be a real estate developer, an architect or a brain surgeon. If your date is a real Lagos gal you will soon be found out and your lying ways will be front page citi people before long. Be yourself, that’s the best version of you there is.
• Do not try to prove to the girl that you are super popular by over greeting people around you, always looking around to see who walks in, and to make sure the girl knows that you know them. That’s sorta irritating, and reveals some sort of insecurity.
• Do not spend the whole evening, day, morning whatever on your bb. I’m sure you are very important and whoever you are bb’ing cannot do without speaking to you, but whoever you are with wants to feel “like the only girl in the world”, the only person in the world even
• This one is a bit tricky. But do not assume that she can find her own way. I personally like to drive myself sha, so if like X, I can no longer bare stupid questions I can just leave. But leave it to her to decide if she wants picking up or not
• Do not go on a date if you are engaged and to be married next week, and all you are using her for is to make sure you have made the right decision to get married
• If your girlfriend of 13 years has just broken up with you for some loaded, heterosexual version of Tom Ford avoid making this a topic of conversation. Nobody wants to be thought of as a rebound
• Do not dominate the conversation, let her speak a little
• Do not under any circumstance talk about football, spend the entire time watching a match (to me at least). We know you like the sport, we would just rather not have to deal with it on what is meant to be a pleasant evening out.
• A lot of girls are assessing you as a potential spouse when they are on a date, so general drunken, leery behaviour is a big no no. Control your drinking.
• Don’t stare. Staring is just rude. Just take a picture it’ll last longer, stare at it when you get home
• Do not control. This is the 21st century, women have opinions too, don’t lord yours over her. If she wants white do not insist on a bottle of red
• And (i’m going to stop here) If you are not a funny person, DO NOT crack jokes, if you must please practice them on a sister, cousin etc for appropriateness and funniness before you try it out doors.
Xoxo.
Anyhows, I had quite a funny conversation with my friend, whose name I shall protect, but you know yourself, and it became quite apparent that depending on how long you have had to watch this parade, sit through the gnarly monologues (I say gnarly because some of them are so deceitfully good), and answer irrelevant questions, dating in Lagos is a chore, akin to studying for a quantum mechanics exam. Myself, X, my mum and my brother had quite a laugh at some of the things people say, ask, do, and I thought to myself that we laugh at it now, but the people that do these things are blissfully unaware of their inappropriateness. So being the niccccceee person that I am (*blushes*) I am gonna let you know what you should not do on a date if you genuinely want a second one. You may have been X’s frog, but you can still be Y’s prince.
• Numero Uno. Personally I believe you can learn a lot more about a person in an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation. You most certainly then cannot learn very much about a person by hosting an formal styled interview with them. Honestly there is no value add to you on a first date asking things like: What is your favourite colour?? (Why do you need to know this), How many siblings do you have? Or any other family questions? (We are not planning the wedding train just yet), What is your favourite day of the week? What MTN plan do you have? How many guys / girls have you dated? These are non value add questions. Just as you may get offended if we asked “How much do you get paid”, “What are your 10 year career plans” we also get offended by these daft questions
• Do not underestimate the Lagos grapevine. There is really nooooooo point in creating a false identity. You will be found out. If you sit on your backside day in day out, do not claim to be a real estate developer, an architect or a brain surgeon. If your date is a real Lagos gal you will soon be found out and your lying ways will be front page citi people before long. Be yourself, that’s the best version of you there is.
• Do not try to prove to the girl that you are super popular by over greeting people around you, always looking around to see who walks in, and to make sure the girl knows that you know them. That’s sorta irritating, and reveals some sort of insecurity.
• Do not spend the whole evening, day, morning whatever on your bb. I’m sure you are very important and whoever you are bb’ing cannot do without speaking to you, but whoever you are with wants to feel “like the only girl in the world”, the only person in the world even
• This one is a bit tricky. But do not assume that she can find her own way. I personally like to drive myself sha, so if like X, I can no longer bare stupid questions I can just leave. But leave it to her to decide if she wants picking up or not
• Do not go on a date if you are engaged and to be married next week, and all you are using her for is to make sure you have made the right decision to get married
• If your girlfriend of 13 years has just broken up with you for some loaded, heterosexual version of Tom Ford avoid making this a topic of conversation. Nobody wants to be thought of as a rebound
• Do not dominate the conversation, let her speak a little
• Do not under any circumstance talk about football, spend the entire time watching a match (to me at least). We know you like the sport, we would just rather not have to deal with it on what is meant to be a pleasant evening out.
• A lot of girls are assessing you as a potential spouse when they are on a date, so general drunken, leery behaviour is a big no no. Control your drinking.
• Don’t stare. Staring is just rude. Just take a picture it’ll last longer, stare at it when you get home
• Do not control. This is the 21st century, women have opinions too, don’t lord yours over her. If she wants white do not insist on a bottle of red
• And (i’m going to stop here) If you are not a funny person, DO NOT crack jokes, if you must please practice them on a sister, cousin etc for appropriateness and funniness before you try it out doors.
Xoxo.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Battle Scars
The worst piece of advice I have ever been given: "Learn from our mistakes" ... In Politics we can learn from mistakes, In Chemistry we can learn from mistakes, in Medicine, Law, Astrophysics, Biochemistry, Horticulture, but in life we quite simply cannot. In order to learn emotional intelligence, financial frugality, entrepreneurship (I just learnt to spell that word :-) ), discipline, accuracy, love etc, I make very bold to say YOU have to have learnt what it feels like not to have them, you have to have had your heart broken, understood want (*insert poverty*), seen your business crash and pick up again, experienced the tragedy of ill discipline, seen the effect of poorly thought out decisions, understood pain, rage, passion, happiness, been hurt and felt pain. All these are your Battle Scars.
No true warrior can return from battle victorious till he has the scars to prove that he fought the battle. These scars act as a constant reminder of his capabilities, a reminder to strive for peace, a testimony to the good allies he keeps, a trophy of sorts. Without these scars the warrior may pick the wrong battles, overestimate his capabilities, seek solace in false allies, make rash decisions. Though his forefathers may have fought a similar battle, it is no indication of his strength.
Adversity (and indeed triumph) is the stone on which we must sharpen our knife. Our battle scars are far more important than any second hand lessons.
Xoxo.
No true warrior can return from battle victorious till he has the scars to prove that he fought the battle. These scars act as a constant reminder of his capabilities, a reminder to strive for peace, a testimony to the good allies he keeps, a trophy of sorts. Without these scars the warrior may pick the wrong battles, overestimate his capabilities, seek solace in false allies, make rash decisions. Though his forefathers may have fought a similar battle, it is no indication of his strength.
Adversity (and indeed triumph) is the stone on which we must sharpen our knife. Our battle scars are far more important than any second hand lessons.
Xoxo.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Cheesy Bait
If you use cheese as bait you'll catch a rat.
I was talking to a friend the other day, and he was going on about how he can't get married to a Nigerian woman, they're too materialistic, he can't empty his whole account to keep a woman happy, yada yada yada. You know the drill, I'm sure most of you know the conversation and have had a similar one with your friends. I have had it several times, hence this post.
I'm really sorry to break it to all you men out there (and I'll come to the ladies later, do not fret), but if you use cheese as bait you are GUARANTEED to catch a rat (I didn't say mouse, rat- a stinky uncouth rat). If you go around popping bottles, driving flash cars, spending money like your account is a bottomless pit, buying the same expensive watch in all the colours it comes in, dropping your black card to pick up every bill, etc, etc. If you are doing all that stuff then of course you are going to attract a gold digging, materialistic 'lady'. You are EXACTLY what this sort of woman is looking for, so she has simply just walked into your trap. If you can afford a Gwagon, you can afford her birkin bags, if you can pay half a mil on a night out you can afford her Brazilian hair, if you have a black card you can afford a house in banana island, with top of the range cars, a maid from the Philippines for the kids she will soon have, if you go around flashing your handmade xxx suit, then you can afford her bimonthly first class trips to London, New York, and Milan for a shopping spree. You put your cheese on display, and she came out to grab it.
I am growing fast tired of this generalisation, assumption that all Nigerian women are all materialistic, gold diggers. As much as I can agree that there are a fair amount of women that fit this profile, there are also a fair few women that don't - decent, well mannered, virtuous, and wise women. If you happen to find yourself surrounded by these materialistic women then I suggest you check yourself, before you generalise. Humility attracts humility and arrogance, flamboyance, ostentaceous adolescent display attracts materialistic, gold digging, and puffed up.
The same goes for women. 'We' complain that there are no decent Nigerian men. They all have a heightened perception of themselves, they think the sun shines out of their ***, they are not serious, all they do is party, drink, womanise, yada yada yada. Perhaps it's just where you're looking, who you're looking at, or who you attract because of who you are.
Xoxo
I was talking to a friend the other day, and he was going on about how he can't get married to a Nigerian woman, they're too materialistic, he can't empty his whole account to keep a woman happy, yada yada yada. You know the drill, I'm sure most of you know the conversation and have had a similar one with your friends. I have had it several times, hence this post.
I'm really sorry to break it to all you men out there (and I'll come to the ladies later, do not fret), but if you use cheese as bait you are GUARANTEED to catch a rat (I didn't say mouse, rat- a stinky uncouth rat). If you go around popping bottles, driving flash cars, spending money like your account is a bottomless pit, buying the same expensive watch in all the colours it comes in, dropping your black card to pick up every bill, etc, etc. If you are doing all that stuff then of course you are going to attract a gold digging, materialistic 'lady'. You are EXACTLY what this sort of woman is looking for, so she has simply just walked into your trap. If you can afford a Gwagon, you can afford her birkin bags, if you can pay half a mil on a night out you can afford her Brazilian hair, if you have a black card you can afford a house in banana island, with top of the range cars, a maid from the Philippines for the kids she will soon have, if you go around flashing your handmade xxx suit, then you can afford her bimonthly first class trips to London, New York, and Milan for a shopping spree. You put your cheese on display, and she came out to grab it.
I am growing fast tired of this generalisation, assumption that all Nigerian women are all materialistic, gold diggers. As much as I can agree that there are a fair amount of women that fit this profile, there are also a fair few women that don't - decent, well mannered, virtuous, and wise women. If you happen to find yourself surrounded by these materialistic women then I suggest you check yourself, before you generalise. Humility attracts humility and arrogance, flamboyance, ostentaceous adolescent display attracts materialistic, gold digging, and puffed up.
The same goes for women. 'We' complain that there are no decent Nigerian men. They all have a heightened perception of themselves, they think the sun shines out of their ***, they are not serious, all they do is party, drink, womanise, yada yada yada. Perhaps it's just where you're looking, who you're looking at, or who you attract because of who you are.
Xoxo
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Broken People
A lot of Nigerians find it quite strange that ‘oyinbos’ have childcare lines that children can call to report their parents when they smack them. Whilst I believe that there is nothing wrong with a little smack for disciplinary purposes, I believe that this service is completely necessary. The truth is that some parents really do take the beatings over the top, the beatings becomes sadistic, a display of power, some parents sexually abuse their children, in Nigeria there is the added dimension of domestic help with a lot of access and exposure to kids – drivers, cooks, guards, house boys and house girls abuse children every day without being noticed. Some children grow up with severe neglect, they may be financially looked after, but their parents spend little more than a minute with them a month. Husbands beat their wives, in many cases women beat their husbands. Some people have turned to drugs, not just for recreation, but to blur the pain of a daily struggle – loneliness, a stammer, a limp. Human trafficking and kidnapping are rife in our society, some people self harm in reaction to severe self confidence issues. I am not sure how many Nigerians have eating disorders sha, we love our amala and gbegiri too much to start throwing it up after eating. The point I am trying to make is that these things are so close to home, they don’t just happen abroad, they happen at our doorstep. Behind the sharp suits, fancy bags, high heels, and big smiles are BROKEN people.
People walk around with all manner and kind of emotional scars, without any outlet, or support system. I do not mean in any way to disrespect the church (or other religious institutions), but Nigerians believe that we can just take the emotionally scarred child to church for prayers and sweep the issue of their rape or physical abuse under the table. While I believe that God can heal hurts, pains and bad memories, there is still a gaping hole in our society where we need pastoral care, counselling, someone to listen to what hurts, to offer a shoulder to cry on, a hug, to rehabilitate them before throwing them back into the dog eat dog world.
However much we try to overlook it, emotional scars shape people and shape their futures. A child that was beaten constantly will grow up to be a serial killer, sadistically trying to inflict the same pain he endured as a child on his victims. A child that grew up to his father constantly beating his mother will inevitably beat his wife, or disrespect women. A young woman who was kidnapped may grow up not to trust anyone, and be constantly paranoid. All these things can be avoided if we stopped avoiding the issues and shoving them on God, and we started talking about them and offering emotional support.
Sorry to be so sullen today, but its “the decor of my mind” and ‘Broken People’ have been on my mind.
Xoxo.
p.s. On a lighter note though, thanks a lot to Oz and Michael for their banner designs. Much love.
People walk around with all manner and kind of emotional scars, without any outlet, or support system. I do not mean in any way to disrespect the church (or other religious institutions), but Nigerians believe that we can just take the emotionally scarred child to church for prayers and sweep the issue of their rape or physical abuse under the table. While I believe that God can heal hurts, pains and bad memories, there is still a gaping hole in our society where we need pastoral care, counselling, someone to listen to what hurts, to offer a shoulder to cry on, a hug, to rehabilitate them before throwing them back into the dog eat dog world.
However much we try to overlook it, emotional scars shape people and shape their futures. A child that was beaten constantly will grow up to be a serial killer, sadistically trying to inflict the same pain he endured as a child on his victims. A child that grew up to his father constantly beating his mother will inevitably beat his wife, or disrespect women. A young woman who was kidnapped may grow up not to trust anyone, and be constantly paranoid. All these things can be avoided if we stopped avoiding the issues and shoving them on God, and we started talking about them and offering emotional support.
Sorry to be so sullen today, but its “the decor of my mind” and ‘Broken People’ have been on my mind.
Xoxo.
p.s. On a lighter note though, thanks a lot to Oz and Michael for their banner designs. Much love.
Monday, May 9, 2011
*Gate*Crashers*
Gatecrashers have the most fun. Think about it, they don’t know the people hosting the event, a lot of time they don’t know many guests, they have licence to do what they like, drink what they like, display poor table manners, say whatever to whoever, and nobody really cares – because nobody knows them, and they go unnoticed.
But gate crashers in Naije are on a whole ‘nother level. It is an ART. Gate-crashers act like they are the ones throwing the party ... They go and sit right next to the celebrant with no shame, they make demands far beyond their station (beyond the station of anybody that didn’t pay for the event), they do the ostentatious dance steps on the dance floor, you know the kind, that take Wizkid too literally when he says “oya oya ko mo le ma jo lo”, their gele’s will match a peacock in its splendour. They know they were intentionally not invited but hey they're still gonna go, and have FUN.
Was chatting with a friend the other day who was ‘ranting’ about not being invited anywhere, actually think she was just taking the piss. My advice to her was “You need to gatecrash more”. Invitations are redundant in Nigeria. Whether you’ve got one or not you can get into pretty much wherever you want to go. Just talk the talk and walk the walk. Swagger takes you far further than any embossed card, email, sms, bbm invite.
So for those of y’all out there that don’t seem to get many invitations I have put together a few Gate crashing do’s and dont’s. FYI this is just banter, do not try any of these at home o, When you get isho, I no dey dere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Shall I put in one more exclamation mark?)
Do’s
• Do your research on the event. Who is throwing it? What exactly they're celebrating? And most importantly what friends you have in common with them?
• Do reach out to mutual friends, slyly and cunningly suggest that you accompany them to the party
• Do just show up without an invitation if you genuinely believe your name missing from the guest list was an oversight (after all the months of planning and putting together a guest list is enough for someone to miss out the name of their closest friend - *insert sarcastic face* - hissss )
• Do try to dress in line with the theme for the event. If the colours for the event are white and navy blue, do try to avoid showing up in black lace and yellow gele – you will look out of place.
• Do arrive slightly after the ‘celebrants’ so that they do not question a stranger at their event
• Do name drop as much as possible, so as to establish your social fit to the gathering. You are not just mutton dressed as lamb. You are the lamb "gan gan".
Dont’s
• Do not take over the dance floor. If you must dance do so subtly, so as not to draw attention to yourself. Just a side to side shuffle will suffilce, do not ko mo le, do not do the splits, do not break dance.
• Do not be unnecessarily demanding. You weren’t actually invited so you should be lucky to get a ball of puff puff and half a glass of five alive, do not go demanding caviar and champagne
• Do not admit that you are gate crashing. Act like you know the ‘celebrants’, pass compliments on their outfit, even allude to conversations you have had with them in the past.
• Do not make up any stories about how you know the ‘celebrants’, you are not a cousin of their uncle Funsho from Kwara, you never know you may just be saying that to an uncle from Kwara that is called Funsho. Save yourself that embarrassment.
• Do not get drunk. This is the biggest DON’T!!!!! You will attract too much attention.
• Do not complain about anything. If the decoration is cheap, the ‘hall’ is small and hot, the waiters are a bit slow, just keep it to yourself, e no concern you, if your complaints are registered your presence is noticed
• Perchance the reason you gate crashed the event was to meet a special somebody, avoid cheap one liners and avoid using those one liners on any member of the celebrants immediate family. This will backfire on you. Guaranteed.
• Do not “beg it”...If you get to the door, they request to see your IV (which of course you don’t have), DO NOT ask them if they know who you are, do not create a scene, do not throw any punches, slaps, rain expletives on the bouncer. Just respect yourself, hold your hand bag or your ’fila’ well, turn on your heal and go HOME. You live to crash another day.
With those pointers I believe you should go largely unnoticed as a gate crasher.
Xoxo.
But gate crashers in Naije are on a whole ‘nother level. It is an ART. Gate-crashers act like they are the ones throwing the party ... They go and sit right next to the celebrant with no shame, they make demands far beyond their station (beyond the station of anybody that didn’t pay for the event), they do the ostentatious dance steps on the dance floor, you know the kind, that take Wizkid too literally when he says “oya oya ko mo le ma jo lo”, their gele’s will match a peacock in its splendour. They know they were intentionally not invited but hey they're still gonna go, and have FUN.
Was chatting with a friend the other day who was ‘ranting’ about not being invited anywhere, actually think she was just taking the piss. My advice to her was “You need to gatecrash more”. Invitations are redundant in Nigeria. Whether you’ve got one or not you can get into pretty much wherever you want to go. Just talk the talk and walk the walk. Swagger takes you far further than any embossed card, email, sms, bbm invite.
So for those of y’all out there that don’t seem to get many invitations I have put together a few Gate crashing do’s and dont’s. FYI this is just banter, do not try any of these at home o, When you get isho, I no dey dere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Shall I put in one more exclamation mark?)
Do’s
• Do your research on the event. Who is throwing it? What exactly they're celebrating? And most importantly what friends you have in common with them?
• Do reach out to mutual friends, slyly and cunningly suggest that you accompany them to the party
• Do just show up without an invitation if you genuinely believe your name missing from the guest list was an oversight (after all the months of planning and putting together a guest list is enough for someone to miss out the name of their closest friend - *insert sarcastic face* - hissss )
• Do try to dress in line with the theme for the event. If the colours for the event are white and navy blue, do try to avoid showing up in black lace and yellow gele – you will look out of place.
• Do arrive slightly after the ‘celebrants’ so that they do not question a stranger at their event
• Do name drop as much as possible, so as to establish your social fit to the gathering. You are not just mutton dressed as lamb. You are the lamb "gan gan".
Dont’s
• Do not take over the dance floor. If you must dance do so subtly, so as not to draw attention to yourself. Just a side to side shuffle will suffilce, do not ko mo le, do not do the splits, do not break dance.
• Do not be unnecessarily demanding. You weren’t actually invited so you should be lucky to get a ball of puff puff and half a glass of five alive, do not go demanding caviar and champagne
• Do not admit that you are gate crashing. Act like you know the ‘celebrants’, pass compliments on their outfit, even allude to conversations you have had with them in the past.
• Do not make up any stories about how you know the ‘celebrants’, you are not a cousin of their uncle Funsho from Kwara, you never know you may just be saying that to an uncle from Kwara that is called Funsho. Save yourself that embarrassment.
• Do not get drunk. This is the biggest DON’T!!!!! You will attract too much attention.
• Do not complain about anything. If the decoration is cheap, the ‘hall’ is small and hot, the waiters are a bit slow, just keep it to yourself, e no concern you, if your complaints are registered your presence is noticed
• Perchance the reason you gate crashed the event was to meet a special somebody, avoid cheap one liners and avoid using those one liners on any member of the celebrants immediate family. This will backfire on you. Guaranteed.
• Do not “beg it”...If you get to the door, they request to see your IV (which of course you don’t have), DO NOT ask them if they know who you are, do not create a scene, do not throw any punches, slaps, rain expletives on the bouncer. Just respect yourself, hold your hand bag or your ’fila’ well, turn on your heal and go HOME. You live to crash another day.
With those pointers I believe you should go largely unnoticed as a gate crasher.
Xoxo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)